Background
Trockel was born in Schwerte, Germany, on November 13, 1952.
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel painting
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel painting
Rosemarie Trockel
Trockel was born in Schwerte, Germany, on November 13, 1952.
Rosemarie Trockel studied at the university from 1974 to 1978 at the Werkkunstschule in Cologne.
Trockel has been highly interested in the grotesque, and most of her art has taken the form of late Surrealism. She was greatly influenced by Joseph Beuys. Generally, Trockel has experimented with many mediums, such as film, video, drawings, ceramics, and collages, plus a full array of sculptures in a range of materials.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Rosemarie Trockel became an active exhibitor. Her first one-person shows were held at the Cologne gallery of Monika Sprüth. This gallery was famous for showcasing only female artists. The German art scene at the time was dominated by male artists such as Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter, Trockel’s presence became refreshing and bold at the same time.
The most common themes of her works are notions of female identity, feminism, the relationship between fine art and craftsmanship, the presence or anonymity of the artist traceable in his artwork. In the 1980s, she has produced her famous series of machine-knit wool works. In 1985 Trockel came to an eminent idea to stretch these woolen materials onto frames.
In 1994 she was commissioned to create the Frankfurter Engel monument for the city of Frankfurt. Since 2004 the medium of collage has also become an important part of Rosemarie Trockel’s oeuvre. Several of her paintings were exhibited in her major retrospective, Post-Menopause at Ludwig Museum, Kessel in 2005. in 2009, she has designed a large picture for the Vienna State Opera, Safety Curtain. In the year 2010, Trockel produced portraits of South Korean designers, as the part of New York Fashion Week show.
The woolen pieces she is famous for are not any habitual embroidery. Instead, Trockel's materials are patterned either with computer-made geometrical motifs or with famous logos. Her series from 2011 entitled I See Darkness (2011) is her most prominent series featuring wool. Rosemarie Trockel’s more recent wool paintings, from 2013, combine both horizontal and vertical stripes of colour, resembling the formal compositions of twentieth-century abstract painting.
In 2012 The New Museum, New York, organized a major exhibition of Trockel's artworks, curated by Lynn Cooke, entitled Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos. After the enormous success of the initial show, in 2013 this exhibit has travelled to the Serpentine Galleries in London. The same year, another retrospective of her works, which included wool pictures, ceramics, foam sculptures and collages was held at the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels.
In 2014, Rosemarie Trockel’s art pieces became part of the exhibition Fiber Sculpture: 1960-Present, held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Today, Rosemarie Trockel lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Rosemarie Trockel is one of the first female artists of the contemporary German art scene who had a strong influence and power in many various mediums, from painting to video art.
She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including those held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England, the Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen, Switzerland, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Drawing Center in New York, and Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel, Switzerland.
In 2011 Trockel won the Wolf Prize for painting.
Untitled (Hommage to Bridget Riley)
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Assisted Lines
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Menopausa
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Kaschmir
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Ex Voto Platte
Opening
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Dackel
Zeichnung
Rosemarie Trockel was extremely interested in the controversial issues of sexuality, feminism, as well as the hierarchy of the political and social systems.
Quotations:
"I felt drawn more to what was happening in New York. In Cologne a lot of energy was wasted in power struggles, while in New York the equal status of women artists seemed much less contested."
"The monkey interests me as an imitator of human beings, as an imitator full stop."
"The minute something works, it ceases to be interesting. As soon as you have spelled something out, you should set it aside."
For a long time, Rosemarie Trockel suffered from agoraphobia and left her apartment only with great effort.
